The days of ups and downs, Blog #4

So I started the day by watching an old Nestea game, because he's a motherfucking boss. Inspired by his zergness I set out to ladder, 5 games was my goal as it was already late in the day.
I won all 5 with reasonable ease, or so it felt at the time.
This day gave me real hope about my improvement, none of the games troubled me and I felt confident in my builds against what my opponent was doing. I saw parts of my opponents play and changed my aggression to fit what I saw them doing

GAME 1:
ZvP

Standard build order, my opponent goes a late proxy star gate which I deal with reasonably well until he returns and snipes my natural when I fail to reposition my spores, not so good play there by me. My micro in this game was poor as well, my roach dodging storms was fine but my baneling drops weren't anywhere near good enough and nearly lost me several battles when they hit to late. I outmacro'd my oppoment but I feel this was more to do with him than me.

GAME 2:
ZvT

Early hatch was the order of the day. I feel I held off the bunker rush well to start with until I gave him a free drone kill and overreacted with far to many lings. This game yet again felt like a case of my opponent playing poorly and giving me a free win, on the positive side my muta harras went much better than usual this game and I conserved muta numbers to give me a large flock in the late game which let me clear out his bases, my fifth could have been much quicker and I showed no signs of teching up, le sigh.

GAME 3:
ZvP

Two base plays don't work if you never attack. Again my opponent goes for a bad build and loses, my fungals were better this game although my army control left much to be desired, I feel my base taking was better this game and I was comfortably ahead at most points, however I was still slow to spend my money, NEEDS WORK

GAME 4:
ZvZ

I held off his early pool reasonably well, he stayed on 1 base to long before teching to Muta's as he expanded, I countered with Hydra's and kept even on roach numbers, the DPS of my push was to high and I won. I feel my planning wasn't to strong this game I saw him going for Muta's but I didn't pull any of my overlords back and this held me back in supply as I went three overlords down at one point.


GAME 5:
ZvP

I think I played okay in this game, I believe my build is a reasonable counter to an FFE'ing protoss and I made sure to scout for stargate tech. I held off his push Because I'm a boss because I had a third unpunished much earlier than him, and then I destroyed his third and kept doing so for the rest of the game. GG

My play on day 2 was nothing short of terrible, nothing seem'd to go right for me, and for the first time ever I left the game straight as I realized I just didn't want to play Starcraft 2 right then. I've never not wanted to play this game. I knew improving would be hard and I accept that but I could really use some help in trying to figure out how to best improve, this day really sapped my moral and I don't want to feel like this ever again

GAME 1:
ZvP

Disconnect T_T

GAME 2:
ZvT

A classic tale of a terran pressuring me and me dying, this needs to stop happening as it's my greatest issue with this match up.
On top of this I get supply blocked for several minutes in game, I'm not sure if those units would have stopped this push but either way that is unexcusable. On a side note I don't know how to deal with this push, I feel I should have better controlled the muta's to clean up the tanks and then just killed the units on the high ground but by that point I would have taken a large amount of damage

GAME 3:
ZvZ

This is the game I realized I just didn't want to play Starcraft, not a good feeling by any stretch of the imagination.

GAME 4:
ZvT

I knew he was going cloak Banshee and I still lost to it, that's simply not good enough. I under prepared especially since I knew he must be massing the banshee's as he hadn't attacked yet. GG

GAME 5:
ZvZ

This is the ZvZ I remember, none of this winning rubbish. No this was good ol' terrible losses...
I misinterpreted an expand as an all in, this game goes horribly he out played me entirely.

GAME 6:
ZvZ

This game was better, this was a standard macro game which I am okay with losing, I think I invested to much in my ling drop which maybe could have saved me had it been at home, overall I should be taking my third faster when I can see no aggression is coming.

GAME 7:
ZvZ

He made more ligns than me, then I missed the cancel on my hatch. He then made more lings than me and killed my hatch(a running theme at this point)
I think I kind of Idra'd this game (the bad kind not the stomping face at IEM kind) looking over the replay I think I wasn't as behind as I could have been but at this point I was tilting pretty hard.

So I still think this match up goes generally well for me, but strong early game pushes fuck me up so hard, so do Banshees. Oh and Goody/Thorzain style slow tank pushes.
This matchup maybe me harder than I think...

No dear god no, Nestea why did you punish me so

So this has gone from my weakest match up to my strongest in a short period, I'm still liking the old roach infestor style, but I now get Infestors later and incorporate baneling drops over their armies, and in some games there mineral lines ( This should really be all games). I am overall happy with this match up but it still has someway to go.